That the practice fee is outrageous nonsense hardly needs discussion. But why allegedly the administrative costs are so high, especially for dunning notices, someone needs to explain that to me. Every retail business deals with far more complicated payment methods and dunning procedures than doctors do. This is elementary software and the dunning system can also be well centralized. The actual effort is quite comparable to that of a typical newspaper kiosk, except that the kiosk operator doesn't have the advantage that he gets the address from his customers for later dunning and collection procedures right away...
It seems to me that the real problem here is that the rip-off artists in the doctor software industry and the chronic complainers in the medical associations are working hand in hand.
At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.